Wherever you are
by mione j weasley
Summary: "Actually I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas, although it sounds terribly ironic in consideration of the situation. And to tell that I hope you're alright. Wherever you are, Hermione" Oneshot - December 25th, 1998


December 25th 1997, 4 a.m.

Ron,

I don't know why I am writing this letter, really. It'll never reach you, anyway. I will take care for this.

And yet, I feel I have to write it. Just to be clear about a few things, but to feel a bit better, too - if this is possible at all.

Somewhere at the very bottom of my handbag, I found a tiny piece of paper, crinkled, blotchy and torn, but it works. The pen was in my coat pocket, I didn't know it was there at all, and it took a while until it was usable again, but that's worth it to me. I'm wondering why I am writing this down at all. I just think this letter would have deserved nicer paper and a pen that doesn't start to scratch at each second word.

The tent is so lonely without you, even more lonely than it was before. A few loose jokes of yours, as silly and unfitting as they might be, would have helped already. Harry and I barely speak to each other – as if there was just nothing left to say. It's so quiet here.

But even worse than silence is the grey. It is dreadfully grey here. You were one of the few people who could bring at least a little bit of colour in our life. And now it seems as if even the last bit colour has conclusively disappeared from the world. Not that it wasn't like that before, but it was easier to endure when it was still the three of us.

You have no idea how terrible it is to wake up in the morning and the first think one sees is your empty bed. Actually you're missing everywhere. I wish I didn't have to bear the permanent longing for you, I wish I didn't have to turn around at every step I hear, expecting you to be back.

We share the watching shifts and the locket. To be able to make something except for you responsible for you leaving us, I try to persuade myself it's all the lockets fault. I didn't even expect it, but it actually worked. Maybe it is this way. I don't believe you would've said all these things if you hadn't have to wear the damn thing all the time, just as we have to. We both know what it causes.

I don't know what Harry thinks about it since we barely talk, and if we do, you'd probably the last person we'd want to talk about. Thinking about you is painful enough. I just hope that all his caginess and the permanent silence is a part of his anger at you. I don't know whether I've ever seen him this angry. You can't imagine. He doesn't want me to notice, but I do … he probably misses you as much as I do.

I wish I could be angry as well, but I'm just sad. Maybe anger would make this easier. I don't know; I wish I did.

I'm brooding over such things for hours, even when I try to stop, but I don't arrive at any conclusion. Everything is spinning around. And, in some abstract way, you're the centre.

You know, I always thought love and hate were ruling out themselves. And now … now it's the other way around. I hate you. At least I try to persuade myself it's that way so I don't have to miss you that much. I hate you for what you're doing to us, that you ran out of us …

And I love you. Damn.

The candle next to me, which is is spreading a bit light, is close to being burnt down. I don't know for how long it'll do it. At a pinch, I'll finish the letter in the dark, but if I don't finish it today, I never will. I just can't get rid of the desperate thought that this candlelight will simply disappear one time, just like you did. But the smoke of a candle that's been blown down volatilises after a while. You're still here although you're not.

I don't know whether writing this down will help. But we went to Godric's Hollow tonight, and we didn't achieve a thing. Literally nothing. And this is how it has been for all the past weeks. Watching, eating, sleeping, brooding over the potential hints that could've hidden somewhere although we know they're not there. And then moving to another place, again and again. Sometimes I wonder whether we have a chance of surviving this at all. Whether any of this makes sense.

However, I find myself thinking about what it would be like if I ever met you again. If we randomly spotted each other on the street, in ten, twenty or fifty years, someday when the war is over. I know it's ridiculous to be thinking about this, now that we don't even know if we'll wake up the next morning.

But I know. I simply know I want to meet you again before I die, whenever this will be. I just want to hear your voice and see your face one more time. To have the feeling you're really there.

Actually I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas, although it sounds terribly ironic in consideration of the situation. And to tell that I hope you're alright.

Wherever you are,

Hermione

London, December 24th 2054

He had read the old letter for the third time now, still not fully realising what he was holding in his hands. His wrinkled, furrowed fingers were unconsciously retracing her faded signature, that had finished a letter a long time a go, a letter to him, Ron, a little she had never wanted him to read.

He rubbed his eyes impatiently and reread the paper for the fourth time. It was getting increasingly difficult to make out her handwriting in the hazy light of the electric bulb, not least because the ink was smudged or faded so that it barely standing out against the domed, yellowish paper. She had, more than once, tried to assure him of the fact it was about time to get glasses ("You won't get any younger, it's not _that _tragic … "), but he had been able to resist against it so far.

He thoughtfully looked around in the dusty attic. He had come here for nothing more than a few of his old Chudley Cannons posters, that – without any doubt – had to be hidden in one of the many packing cases that were filled with junk and unused or forgotten things; but he had forgotten about his back that made lifting the cardboard boxes next to impossible, not to mention carrying them, and then, whilst searching through an old carpetbag, he had come across that aged, dusty letter which had made it impossible to continue with his original intention.

He felt like being backwards catapulted into his past without being told, a past that was dating back so many years now, but that clearly appeared in his mind whilst he was reading her letter, as if only a few hours had passed since she had written it. And now that all these memories were skyrocketing inside him like glowing lava during a volcanic eruption, he failed to see how much time had passed and that it was still at present, captured in the words she had addressed at him in her despair, although it seemed like running against a wall.

Cautiously, he put the hoary, brittle paper in his shirt pocket and started climbing downwards, quietly groaning – in doing so, he missed the next step three times because, stuck in his own thought, he didn't notice it (or just didn't see it in time). After he had had mastered the descent without crashing and several broken bones, he heard a voice calling his name from the ground floor.

She had only just put the bag on the table when he entered the kitchen, and she turned around with a smile when she heard his steps.

"So, have you been successful?", she asked, putting the milk carton in the fridge.

"Er – what?", he asked in a dither.

She sighed. "Ron, you're gradually becoming senile. Rose will arrive here with the kids for dinner, and you promised you'd look for your old quidditch posters, did you forget?"

"Oh, er – no, I haven't found them yet." He had completely forgotten about the posters.

She closed the fridge and blinked at him. "You didn't even look for them, did you?"

"Of course I did!", he protested. He felt the letter in his pocket. "I – I found something … something else."

She put bread and tomatoes in the cupboard and turned around with a questioning look. "Yeah? What did you find?"

He pulled out the letter nervously, trying not to crinkle it even more, and handed it to her. Her fingers were trembling when she accepted it – she unfolded it silently and skimmed the first sentences.

The date should have been enough for her to tell what it was, but she read the whole letter without a word. He watched her, more and more feeling like a schoolboy who had broken an important rule and was now awaiting his punishment.

Sometime, she raised her head and her laughter lines covered eyes met his.

"I didn't want you to read it."

"Yeah – well –" He started stepping from one foot to another although it was making his back hurt. "I realised that whilst reading, but – you know, it was too late. I'm sorry, really", he added.

She just shook her head with a thoughtful expression. "You don't have to … I didn't even know it was in the attic."

"Me neither", he replied and at the same moment he noticed how stupid that answer was in consideration of the fact he hadn't even known about the letter's existence half an hour ago.

She didn't seem to hold the remark against him. In fact, she smiled when she looked up at him again. "I would've never thought it still existed."

"Yeah, hard to believe how many years ago this was", he mumbled, barely able to hide his relief that spread inside him because she wasn't made at him.

"Yes … fifty-seven years this Christmas, right?"

"Are you serious?" He laughed, wrapping his arms around her. "Merlin, we got old."


End file.
